‘Betrayed’ by J&K Bank, Khidmat Centre Professionals go on Strike

Jammu: Slogans of “We want jobs, we want jobs” rented the air as hundreds of e-governance facilitating Khidmat Centres Association (KCA) members staged a protest demonstration in Jammu demanding their absorption in Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) Bank as regular employees. The protest entered its 16th day on Wednesday, and the protestors remain unflinched and have resolved to launch a hunger strike if their demands are not met.

Speaking to Newsclick, KCA leader Tehseen Hussain said, “It was in 2009 when Khidmat Centres were started by the J&K Bank with the promise that all e-governance services will be routed from these centres. It has been 11 years, but not even a single service has been routed through us. We have been protesting for a very long time and each time , the J&K Bank gave us assurances, but nothing has happened so far.”

Hussein said they had a meeting with the J&K Bank chairman and were promised that within the stipulated time of three months, a strong job policy would be framed for employees of these centres. “It has been a year now and there is still no policy,” he added.

According to the protestors, the Khidmat Centres were created with the idea to outsource Government to Customer (G2C), Business to Customer (B2C) & Business to Business (B2B) services of the J&K Bank to these centres. But this never happened. The Khidmat centres were mandated to “provide government to citizen and business to Citizen services at the village level.” The people operating Khidmat centres are known as Village Level Entrepreneurs (VLEs.)

These centres were also tasked to provide many offline services, such as desktop publishing (DTP), digital photography, scanning, CD writing, J&K Bank loan documentation, payment of mobile bills and recharge for pre-paid users. These centres were also envisioned for providing a range of services at the village level.

The first and foremost task of a Khidmat Centre was to simplify the documentation work with the help of banks and IT, that is, instead of going to banks, paying bills, people, especially villagers, were asked to avail the nearby services. There are around 1,204 Khidmat Centres across J&K, which were a part of the National e-Governance Plan.

Another protestor told Newsclick: “The reason why Khidmat Centre came into existence was never executed. We have been exploited for almost decade, and that has forced us to launch this protest. We demand our absorption into the J&K Bank as regular employees, as the careers of many well-educated people have been put on stake.”

The protestors appealed to the Lt Governor to intervene and frame a “permanent settlement policy” for the Khidmat Centre professionals.

A blog about Khidmat Centres by J&K Bank reads, “A Dream project ready to get launched in J&K State. Few months back J&K Bank has entered into a ‘Service Center Agency’ (SCA) tie-up with J&K government for setting up 1109 IT Kiosks in the state. The Kiosks, set up on a Franchiser-Franchisee basis, will act as Common Service Centers (CSC) for delivery of G2C (Government to Customer) and B2C (Business to Customer) services including financial services in all the rural areas of the state. The centers shall be Set here in J&K under name “KHIDMAT CENTRE” and run by Village Level Entrepreneurs (VLEs) identified through a comprehensive selection process made by J&K Bank. This prestigious project will help the Bank in extending its services at the door-step in all the 22 districts of the state.”